Ingredients

Serves about 8 people, each portion contains about 3/4 of a bajillion calories.

150g oaty biscuits
75g butter
1 can of Carnation Caramel (397g)
1 to 1.5 tsp of good quality sea salt flakes
200g dark chocolate, 65-75% cocoa solids. Extra marks are available if you use choc with cocoa nibs or bits of chopped up roasted coffee bean
400ml double cream
Half a packet of Maltesers

I use a 7 inch cake tin with a removable base, many people prefer modern springforms.

Method

Line the base and sides of the cake tin with greaseproof paper

Bash up the biscuits inside a plastic bag with a rolling pin, frying pan or half-brick. Melt the butter and stir them together, then press into a tight layer in the bottom of the tin.

Take two tablespoons of the caramel, stir through a teaspoon of cream and set it aside for decorating later.

Heat up the cream to 50-60 degrees, then break the chocolate into it and stir a lot until it’s all dissolved. After a couple of minutes of stirring, the mixture will turn a lovely smooth brown. Keep stirring until it’s cool enough to start to hold its shape.

Whilst that’s chilling down to 30-35 degrees C, you can stir the sea salt flakes into the caramel. It’s very easy to over-mix this, it needs to be able to keep its shape so you might have to chill the caramel for 5 minutes after stirring it. Dollop it into the middle of the buttery biscuit base and make sure you leave a clear inch around the outside so that you get a good chocolate finish.

Pour the chocolate ganache evenly and gently over the top and gently shake it to get a flat surface.

If you’ve got a sharp enough knife, cut the Maltesers in half and push them just slightly into the surface so they stay in place.

Chill it in the fridge overnight to make sure it’s fully set.

To decorate the top, put the reserved caramel cream mix into the corner of a freezer bag and snip the tiniest hole in the corner with sharp scissors. Gently pipe a pattern onto the top.

Cross section of the torte

A fully swirled torte

According to the internet, the yeasts we’re likely to come across for home brewing and home baking can be loosely grouped into two sets of behaviours. Top cropping and bottom cropping. Imaginatively, the name refers to whether the yeast hangs around at the top of liquid and does its thing, or sinks to the bottom of it. I can think of a couple of reasons why you might care about the difference, the first is whether you want all the detritus already at the bottom of the brew so you don’t need to filter it before syphoning and the second is how much alcohol the yeast will tolerate before dying off and metabolic activity ceases.

Yeasts occur naturally in the environment, they’re perhaps most noticable as the pale dusting on grapes skins. Evolution being what it is, the best yeasts for your unique environment will be the ones that are already in it, but it can still be fun to trade different sourdoughs with other people. There are those bakers who jealously guard a range of sourdough mixes that make some unique breads around the world, so it’s serious business. This forum post includes some photos of how people manufacture their own yeast mixes to bulk up enough of a supply to use in batches.

A fairly extreme example of natural yeasts is the Ginger Beer “Plant”, which is a combination of natural yeasts in symbosis with a Lactobacillus. The equillibrium is reached because the two strains of bacteria have sufficiently different tolerances to alcohol, the Lactobacillus consumes enough of it to keep the Saccharomyces alive, which in turn produces more alcohol from the sugars you feed it.

It’s most likely that the yeast you’ll have available at home is Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is used around the world to give a reliably good result in most environments and is widely available as ‘bakers yeast’ in most shops. This is the stereotypical example of a top fermenting yeast, works best at room temperatures

Brewers traditionally used the same yeast as bakers, which is often referred to as ale yeast, but the beer and wine industrys have spent the past few centuries selectively breeding yeasts for traits they value, which is why any reputable homebrew shop will have a small selection of different yeasts that are optimised for brewing wine, cider and different beers. Of course, you don’t have to use these specialised yeasts, the basic biology will function just fine with any strain.

Since the work put in by Øjvind Winge in the 1880s, much of the world’s lager is brewed from Saccharomyces carlsbergensis. This is the stereotypical example of bottom fermenting yeast, works best when refrigerated slightly and is popular for a very good reason. This works more slowly because it’s colder, but it also has much less influence on the flavour of the drink, which makes the final product easier to sell to the mass market.

I’d love to make a claim about alcohol tolerances for the different types of yeasts, but I’ve completely lost my references and can’t find it in my books on beer or wine. I’ll edit it back in later when I find some data.

For the moment, I prefer to kepe things simple and traditional. Also, I already have a tin of bakers yeast, so I use that for everything.

Fun with yeast

The above photograph is from last weekend, featuring some home brewed ginger beer, normal bread and a sourdough cake mix named Herman.

Herman on day 1

To look after me properly, you need to follow these simple instructions:

Day 1 – you get a dollop of Herman, take my lid off, put me in a large bowl and leave me at room temperature, covered with a tea towel
Day 2 – stir me twice a day
Day 3 – Same as day 2
Day 4 – I am hungry! Feed me 200ml milk, 200g plain flour and 250g of sugar
Days 5, 6, 7 and 8 – Stir me twice a day
Day 9 – I am hungry! Feed me the same as day 4, then divide me into 5 equal amounts. Give some sons of Herman to your friends with a copy of how to look after me and keep the rest for tomorrow
Day 10 – It’s cake time!

Ingredients

Makes one large cake or 12 big muffins

Ready to bake!

Cake
1 portion of Herman
150ml vegetable oil
3 eggs
250g sugar
350g self-raising flour
1 tsp salt

and then any flavour combinations you like that add another 200g of solid to the mixture

I added 2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon and 200g of grated baking apple, but you could also use things like nuts, chopped chocolate, rum-soaked raisins, raspberry and white chocolate, maple syrup and pecan nuts, black cherries and dark chocolate, or make lots of muffins and use all of the above!

Filling
75g very soft, room temperature butter
200g icing sugar
quarter of a teaspoon of vanilla paste, or the flavouring of your choice

Icing
100g icing sugar
3 tablespoons water
Half a teaspoon ground ginger

Method

Stir everything all together in a large bowl and decant into your cake tin or muffin trays.

A very firm mixture

This will make a very stiff mixture, but don’t worry about it not rising, it’s got both baking powder AND yeast in it, so it will comfortably double in volume when in the oven.

Baked to a golden finish

Bake at 180C for 40 minutes for muffin sized cakes or 75 minutes for a big cake. Everybody’s oven is different so always check whether the centre is cooked through with a skewer.

Leave it to cool for 10 minutes before turning out onto a rack to cool fully.

I then sliced mine in half with a breadknife and filled with buttercream filling (beat the butter with an electric whisk and gradually add in the icing sugar until it’s combined, light and fluffy, then stir in your colouring and / or flavouring).

The icing was a simple water icing with a hint of ginger, very very slowly add water to some icing sugar until it comes together into a pipable consistency, then squiggle over the top of the cake.

Share, and enjoy!

Frosted and iced up

Or baked as a loaf

Ingredients

Makes about 1.8 litres

1600ml water – w/o chlorine if possible, but the lemon juice should offset that
1/4 tsp yeast
225g sugar
juice of 1 lemon
3 big lumps of ginger – grated not chopped, you want juice
2 teaspoons of runny honey

Ginger Beer Ingredients

You need a sterilised 2 litre plastic bottle, the type that fizzy drinks and water come in. Rather than sterilising it, I just paid 17p at Morrisons for a new one and got the water thrown in too.

You also need a device to get the Stuff into the bottle. I used a rolled up piece of A4 paper, but many people favour plastic funnels. If your funnel neck is narrow, you’ll likely need a chopstick to poke the mixture through when it gets stuck

A 2 litre jug helps and you need some cheesecloth or muslin or something to use as a fine meshed filter. A fine sieve might also do it, but would be annoying to clean.

Method

You have a couple of variables to adjust depending upon how gingery you like it and how fizzy you’d like it to be.

If you like a mild flavour then chop your ginger (or blender it), whereas if you like a fuller flavour then grate it. Grating releases more of the juicy bits from the stringy fibrous bits of ginger root. If you like it fizzier, then use half a teaspoon of yeast, but please do be careful not to explode your bottle all over the place by over pressurising it. Do not use a glass bottle.

The method is essentially mixing up all the ingredients and get them into the bottle, I’ve found it easier and less messy if I do it in stages.

Grate your ginger into a 1 litre jug. To this, add the lemon juice, the honey, the sugar and about half a pint of water.

Mix it all up and pour it into your bottle, using more water to get the solids out of the jug and into the bottle.

Fill the bottle about half way, put the lid on it and shake it up a lot to get it all properly mixed together.

Carefully spoon in the yeast and top up the water until there’s 2 – 3 inches of air left. You need this space for the CO2 gas to expand into and to judge the pressure by seeing how squashable the bottle is.

Shake it up again.

All mixed up and ready to wait

Leave the bottle at room temperature for about 48 hours.

After about 12-18 hours, you should be able to judge progress by feeling the difference in pressure by squashing the bottle gently with your fingers. At the start it should be easily squashable. It’s ready when you can’t noticably squash it. You should also notice that most of the solids float to the surface, buoyed by all the gas.

Bubbly ginger beer after 48 hours

Very very slowly release the pressure. Take many minutes over this, unless you like ginger beer fountains.

Pour the mix through your cheesecloth back into your jug to remove as much of the solids and sediment as you can possibly manage, and then decant back into your now cleaned bottle.

Store it in the fridge until you want to drink it. Fridge means cold, so the remaining yeast will be much slowed down. A bit of yeast action is good though, because it will put the fizz back into your ginger beer after you let it all out when decanting it.

Enjoy over ice with a slice of lime, or mixed with some cheap blended whisky. I prefer it neat.

Finished, home fermented ginger beer

I consulted with both Delia and Nigella and whilst they both agree on a basic custard recipe, it was Nigella who added the top tip of keeping the kitchen sink half full of cold water, ready to plunge your pan into it if you’re in the slightest danger of it splitting and turning into scrambled egg.

Whilst apricots and raspberries do go well together, this was more of an excuse to use a handful of fruit that had been sat around ripening for a while

Ingredients

Makes about 750ml

200ml double cream
400ml milk
3 free range egg yolks
110g sugar

4 ripe apricots
50g raspberries

Method

Start by making your custard.

Mix together the cream and milk, put it in a pan and start it warming up. You don’t want it to boil, but get close.
Whilst that’s heating, whisk together the egg yolks and 100g of the sugar until it gets visibly lighter.

Once the milk just starts to bubble, pour the hot milk over the egg and sugar mix and keep whisking.

Put the mixture back into a pan and gradually heat it up, whisking or stirring all the while. It’s safer to heat it gently, but I gave it the beans (small ring on electric hob, I wouldn’t dare do that on a gas ring) and didn’t stop whisking. After about 5 minutes of this treatment, I could just start to see little bits of colour changes within the mixture, so it was straight into the sink of cold water and in with the electric whisk. The proper way to judge when it’s done is look for a velvety smooth texture that just coats the back of a spoon, it won’t thicken properly until it cools down to room temperature. Next time, I’ll give it 7-8 minutes on a medium heat and still lots of whisking.

Custard is just coating the back of the spoon

With your custard safe, it’s time to prepare the fruit.

Finely dice the apricots and stir them through the custard.

Pour it into a jug or tub to chill and cover it with cling film to prevent a skin forming. A skin isn’t the end of the world with this mixture, but it’s a quick way of wasting a whole lot of vanilla seeds if you’ve added a vanilla pod. Leave it in the fridge until it’s cold.

Preparing a raspberry syrup to swirl through the ice cream is easy enough, put a handful of raspberries in a pan with a couple of spoons of sugar and a couple of spoons of water. Let it slowly cook until the fruit starts to collapse, then finish the job with the back of a spoon. Some people sieve out the seeds for a purer look. Chill the raspberry syrup.

Churn the ice cream in a machine for 15-20 minutes and transfer it into your tub. Finally, spoon in the raspberry syrup and give it a swirl with the spoon or a chopstick and freeze it for a couple of hours before serving.

Apricot and Raspberry Ice Cream

Ingredients

Serves at least 6

Topping:
6 Apricots
25g butter
2 tablespoons apricot jam

Base:
100g plain flour
50g butter
50g sugar
50g Amaretti biscuits

You’ll need a tart or cake tin with a removable base

Method

Preheat an oven to 180C

Line the base of the cake tin with greaseproof or baking parchment

First make the base mixture by creaming together the butter and sugar, then rubbing through the flour to get a consistency of breadcrumbs. Use your fingers or a rolling pin or the bottom of a frying pan to reduce the Amaretti biscuits to small crumbs and stir them into the mixture.

Tightly pack the mixture into the bottom of the cake tin, trying to leave as few air gaps as possible.

Next slice your fruit, I used apricots because I think they go well with almonds, but bramley apples would also work well with a generous spoon of ground cinnamon. This is Italian inspired, so try to heap on the fruit generously rather than artfully arranging them.

To make it look better and hold together a bit, I used two glazes. The first was melting a spoon of butter in the microwave and brushing it all over the fruit (this is where you’d add the cinnamon if using apples), then I melted a couple of tablespoons of apricot jam in the microwave and brushed that all over the fruit too.

It’s now safe to leave in the fridge or freezer until you want to cook it.

Bake it in the oven for 40 minutes. The fruit will be done sooner but it’s nice to get a good crunchy base so that it holds together on the plate. I served it with a quinelle of creme fraiche.

Apricot and Amaretti

Ingredients

makes 2, scales well up to ‘big’

quarter of a packet of shop bought puff pastry
half a punnet of fresh strawberries or raspberries
200ml double cream
quarter of a teaspoon of vanilla paste or extract
4 squares of Bournville
Icing sugar
a few mint leaves to garnish

Pastry Cutters or ring moulds
Small sieve or tea strainer
Something to pipe with
Something to crush with
Greaseproof parchment or silicone sheet
2 oven trays or baking sheets

Method

The first element to sort out is the Pastry. The idea is to have the lightness of puff pastry but with none of its expanding height.

Preheat your oven.

Roll out the puff pastry so it’s fairly thin, then place it on a sheet of something non stick on a baking tray. Use a tea strainer or small sieve to lightly sprinkle about a teaspoon of icing sugar onto the pastry, then cover it with another non stick sheet and press it down with the second baking tray.

Put it in the oven for half of the cooking time indicated on the packet’s instructions.

Whilst that’s baking, you can get on with making the fruit coolis. For soft fruit, this turns out to be easier than you’d think.

I took 4 strawberries and bashed hell out of them using my wood mortar and pestle, then passed them through my tea strainer with the help of the back of a spoon. Clean your sieve then use it to gently stir in a teaspoon of icing sugar to the fruit.

Set your coolis aside in the fridge for later

By now, the oven timer’s probably beeping, so take out the half cooked pastry and sieve over another teaspoon of icing sugar. Put the pastry back between its sheets of parchment and baking trays and give it the remaining 10 minutes in the oven.

Whilst that’s cooking, you can get on with the next element, the vanilla cream. Simply add a couple of drops of vanilla extract or paste to some double cream and give it the beans with an electric whisk until the cream can just hold its shape. You don’t want it to be so solid that you can stand a spoon in it, or you’ll never pipe it out.

Now prepare your fruit. The quantity will depend on the size of your fruit and moulds (i used a medium pastry cutter for my mould). I took about a dozen strawberries and cleaned, hulled and sliced them in half lengthwise.

Take out the pastry and let it cool to room temperature. Once that’s done you can cut out 4 pieces of pastry for the tops and bottom of the dish. Make sure the sugar crusted side is upwards.

Now for the fun part, assembling it without making a splodgy mess.

Leave the first pastry circle in the bottom of the mould and place it in the centre of a flat plate. Now stand up fruit around the outside edge, I think strawberries look better with the cut side outwards. You may need to cut one down so that the circle doesnt overlap. Put a couple more slices in the bottom.

Now, using a piping bag or a pair of teaspoons, fill up the mould with the vanilla cream and top it with another piece of pastry. If you’ve got more than one mould, then great, leave it on until the last minute so the cream can get hold of the fruit and pastry so it holds together.

Next, melt a few squares of Bournville choc in the microwave or bain marie and pipe very very small decorative lines on the plate. The idea here is to make an edge you can fill with coulis, so don’t leave any gaps. Ignore the thickness of my choc in the photos, I’m rubbish at piping melted choc.

Give it a few seconds to set, then carefully spoon some in some coolis. The fruit coolis should settle into any gaps after a few seconds, so don’t be tempted to overfill it, it doesn’t take much to spill over.

You can now put the desert in the fridge until it’s needed. The pastry’s sugar crust should help stop it going soggy for a few hours.

Just before serving, sieve another half teaspoon of icing sugar onto the top of the pastry. Then, holding down the top pastry lid, gently gently lift off the moulds.

Garnish with a few mint leaves under some more fruit and serve.

Ingredients

Makes enough for at least 6

300g madeira cake
600ml double cream
200g Bournville choc
75g of nuts, I used almonds and pecan, others used macadamia and hazelnuts
75g of candied ginger, cherries or peel
a teaspoon of cocoa powder for presentation
25ml of brandy or another fruit spirit

1.5 litre bowl

Method

Line the bowl with a double layer of clingfilm

Very thinly slice the madeira cake and tesselate a layer of cake around the bottom and inside of your bowl, trying not to overlap or leave gaps. A thick layer makes for a stodgy dessert, this isn’t a summer fruits pudding.

Use a pastry brush or your finger or something to dash brandy evenly across the cake.

Roughly chop your nuts, not too small, you’re aiming for interest and crunch without breaking people’s teeth. Take a third of the choc and finely chop it, a coarse grater would do.

Loosely whip your cream so that it forms soft peaks, but they sink back down again after a couple of seconds. Split the cream into two approximately even portions.

Into the first half of the cream, whisk in the chopped nuts, fruit or peel.

For the second half, melt the remaining x00g of choc in the microwave or bain marie and whisk it into the remaining cream.

Take the white cream and dollop it into the bowl, spreading it up around the edges and leaving a hollow in the inside that you can fill up with the chocolate cream.

Make a lid with more slices of cake, top it with clingfilm and then put it in the fridge to set for a couple of hours with a heavy plate on top.

To serve, carefully turn it out onto a plate and very lightly dust half a teaspoon of cocoa powder over it with a small sieve or tea strainer.

Ingredients

Serves at least 10

400g choc, at least 55% cocoa solids
2 tbsp golden syrup
75g sugar
200g glace cherries
250g digestive biscuits
300g butter
2 tbsp kirsche or brandy (optional)

Method

Put a couple of tablespoons of spirits into the cherries tub, give it a shake and leave it to soak overnight.

Line a 900g loaf tin with two layers of parchment or clingfilm

I used a mix of Bournville and hotel choc 70% dark for this. Scientifically break up the chocolate into chunks. I left it in its wrapper and smacked it a few times with a claw hammer. A rolling pin or hob nailed boot would also work.

Loosely dice the butter so it melts quickly.

Put the chocolate, sugar, syrup and butter into a pan and gently gently melt it together, stirring until it’s smooth. Do not let it get too hot.

Whilst the hob is doing its thing, put the biscuits into a plastic bag and gently use your fingers to break them apart. You want chunks, not crumbs.

Once it’s smooth, dump the cherries and biscuits into the chocolate mix. Stir it together thoroughly and pour it into the loaf tin, trying to not leave air gaps.

Choc cherry fridge cake

Leave it to cool to room temperature, then give it two hours in the fridge before turning out and slicing thinly with a sharp knife.

I hadn’t met sunblush tomatoes before, but they were going half price from the supermarket’s deli counter. They’re half dried so have a nice concentrated sweet flavour whilst being soft enough to eat. The oil-soaked jars of sundried tomatoes would also work, but you’d need to rehydrate fully dried ones.

Ingredients

Serves 5 – 6

900g of mixed fish. I used about 300g trout, 300g coley and 300g undyed smoked haddock
100g grated hard mature italian cheese. I used Parmigiano-Reggiano
Olive oil
2 hard boiled eggs, shelled and cut into wedges
75g peas
1 bunch of spring onions
250ml creme fraiche
200ml double cream
6 tablespoons of pesto. either basil or rocket is fine.
100g sun blushed or oil soaked sundried tomatoes

600g potatoes
400g celeriac
2 tablespoons yellow mustard seeds

Method

Roughly chop and boil the potatoes and celeriac until they slide off a knife. Drain nearly all of the water, keep a tablespoon or so in the bottom of the pan. Mash it thoroughly, stir in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, 75g of the grated cheese and season well.

Skin and bone the fish if necessary and slice into bite sized chunks, going across the grain if you can so that it flakes on the fork, not on the chopping board.

Put the fish into the bottom of your baking dish or dishes

Chop the spring onions on the diagonal and cut the tomatoes into quarters and evenly scatter them amongst the fish, and do the same with the wedges of egg. Add the peas.

Mix together the creme fraiche, cream and pesto and evenly spoon it over the top of the fish mixture.

If you did a good job with your mashing, you can try piping the potato mix over the top so it looks fun when baked. I didn’t and nearly exploded the piping bag so made do with dolloping it instead.

Sprinkle over the rest of the grated cheese and either freeze it or give it half an hour in a 200C oven until the top is golden and crusty.

Fish Pie

Vanilla pods can be hard to find and they’re certainly expensive. I’m lucky enough to have a couple of delis in town that sell pods that aren’t as dried and tired as the supermarket ones from the major brands of spice merchants. A fresh pod is one that flexes when you bend it in half, it shouldn’t snap. Some places are now starting to sell small jars of vanilla paste, which is better than vanilla extract because you still get the nice flecks of the seeds. A small jar is 4-5 pounds and one teaspoon is equivalent to 1 pod.

Gelatine is something that varies over time. Apparently, 1 sheet of gelatine used be enough to set 125ml, or 1/4 pint, or liquid, but some brands are more effective than others. I used 6 of Supercook’s sheets because that’s all the supermarket sells and it came out far too rubbery and my spoon nearly bounced off my forehead. Let them set slowly in the fridge over several hours. Whilst you can set them in an hour using the freezer, that makes them even more rubbery.

Ingredients

Serves 5, depending upon the size of your ramekins

200ml coconut milk, light or full fat is fine.
300ml double cream
5 gelatine leaves
75g palm sugar
1 vanilla pod
2 tbsp sugar cane rum

2 1/2 passion fruits
1 ripe mango
1 lime
2 tsp fresh mint
2 tbsp ginger syrup (think stem ginger jars)

Method

Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water for at least 5 minutes, until they’re soft.

Whilst they’re soaking, put the coconut milk, cream, sugar, the vanilla seeds and the pod itself into a pan and heat through until the sugar’s dissolved. Let it cool, discard the vanilla pod and mix in the rum.

Put the gelatine into the cream mix and stir until it’s dissolved.

Pour into your individual moulds and let it cool to room temperature before leaving it to set in the fridge.

To make up the mango salsa, finely dice the mango, halve and scoop out the passion fruit seeds and mix it together with the lime zest, a very small squeeze of the juice, the ginger syrup and the finely chopped mint. Give the salsa half an hour for the flavours to infuse.

To get the panacottas out of their ramekins, I put them in the steam from a boiling kettle for 20 seconds before turning them out. You might make a bit of a creamy mess from melting the outside layer, but you can wipe that up for presentation.

To serve, spoon the salsa back into the passion fruit halves and put a small sprig of mint in the top of each panacotta.

Tropical Panacotta

Ingredients

175g unsalted butter
175g sugar
3 eggs
250g self raising flour
25g oats
25g ground almonds
1 lemon
300g mixed dried fruit (better quality raisins are noticably better)
2 teaspoons mixed spice

2 tablespoons apricot jam or elderflower jelly to glaze
1 block of marzipan to cover and decorate

Ingredients

Method

Preheat your oven to 160C if it’s a fan, 180 if not.
Prepare your cake tin with a double layer of parchment

Cream together the butter and sugar with an electric whisk for a couple of minutes until they’re pale and light. Whisk in the lemon juice and zest along with the rest of the dry ingredients just until they’re all mixed through. Fold in the dried fruit.

Batter

Pour the batter into the tin and bake it for 20 minutes at 160C, before turning it down to 140C for another 60 minutes. Keep checking it every 10 minutes after that to see if it’s cooked. It’s done when the centre springs back when you touch it, or when a skewer comes out clean from the centre.

The edges of the cake will also just start to pull away from the edges of the tin. If it’s shrunk more than a mm or so, then it’s over cooked and you should have done it slower

Just pulled away from the edge of the tin

Leave it to cool for 20 minutes before turning it out to cool completely

Once it’s cool, roll out the marzipan so that it’s just wide enough to cover the cake. I didn’t quite have enough so mine was too thin. Aim for a good 3 or 4 mm thickness on top.

To stick the marzipan to the cake, take a small saucepan and melt two tablespoons of apricot jam or something similar. I used some of my 2008 vintage elderflower and ginger jelly which worked really well. Once it’s fluid, use a pastry brush to thinly glaze the entire cake.

Cooled cake

add a melted glaze

Makes a shiny glazed cake

Then roll over the marzipan, trim the bottom to fit the cake and use any remaining to decorate the top with little balls. I won’t enter into the discussion for how many balls one should have, theologically speaking.

Light easter fruit cake

Cherry and Almond Cake

Serves at least 12

Ingredients

225g unsalted butter
250g whole glace cherries, soaked overnight in 3 tablespoons of Kirsch or another Eau de Vie
225g self raising flour
150g marzipan
225g sugar
115g ground almonds
1 lemon
4 eggs
Icing Sugar

Ingredients

Method

Preheat the oven to 150C if it’s fan assisted, 170C if not.

Prepare your tin with a double layer of parchment. I used a circular tin with removable base and used some geometry to cut two circles of parchment from the roll, cut a rough square, carefully fold it into a triangle then hold the point in the middle of the tin and trim the edge so it unfolds into a kind of circle.

Roll out the marzipan between the two parchment circles so that it’s half a centimetre away from the edge

Cake batter, rolled marzipan, soaked cherries and lined tin

Zest the lemon and cream it with the butter and sugar with an electric whisk for a few minutes until it’s pale and light. Whisk in the eggs, almonds, flour and the juice of half the lemon.

Now for the messy part, assembling it.
Place half of the batter in the bottom of your tin. Take about 100g of the cherries and arrange them in a circular pattern across the batter, these will support the layer of marzipan that you put on top next. Try to avoid too many air gaps. Put another 100g of cherries on top of the marzipan in a wider circular pattern (so that you get one or two per slice) and fill up with the rest of the batter.

Assembled cake, I didn't quite get all the top cherry layer under the batter

Bake it for 50 minutes and then keep checking it every 10 minutes to see if it’s done. Mine took 80 minutes, but that was about 10 minutes too long. It’s done when the middle of the cake springs back when you touch it and when a skewer comes out clean (give or take the gooey marzipan)

Leave it to cool for 20 minutes before turning it out of the tin to cool completely.

Baked

Iced

I iced mine by mixing about 100g of icing sugar with the left over cherry syrup and kirsch and about a tablespoon of cold water so that the icing just coated the back of the spoon. I then topped it with sliced cherries.

Cherry and Almond Cake

Sakushi has got something for everybody, it’s got bar seats at the conveyor belt if you’re after a casual bite, half a dozen booths and a handful of normal tables. I think you’d fit in about 50 people when it’s really buzzing. I won’t copy out its menu, but its variety makes it stand out from some other places I’ve visited.

We arrived early in the evening service, I think we were the second or third party in there, but it soon filled up with other couples and some young groups of friends. A few people stopped by to take advantage of their takeaway service, which seemed like a great idea if you happened to be nearby. Actually, I think Yo! do a similar takeaway service from their menu if you’ve time to wait for their kitchen, but not to sit down and eat.

The front of house staff are friendly, welcoming and knowledgeable. They were delighted to discuss some of the more interesting dishes on offer as well as advise on things like which order to eat things in and portion sizes. As one of them said “you keep ordering, and I’ll keep bringing it”. Challenge accepted.

This was the first Japanese place that’s had a specials board, where you get the entire roll of a maki if you custom ordered it, rather than just a couple of slices.

We started with a Miso Soup and Sashimi. Miso soup is Miso soup, but the sashimi was just meltingly fresh, I couldn’t choose between fish but luckily they do platters of different sizes. I had a collection of salmon, tuna, seabass and what was either yellow tail or butterfish, beautifully presented on some real seaweeds and salads and a real leaf (rather than the green plastic one normally come across).

Sashimi (slightly nommed)

We followed this up with a few maki from the conveyor belt whilst the kitchen prepared some Kara Age Chicken and a hand roll of their in house speciality, the ‘Sakushi Roll’. This is clearly aimed at a western audience, the only thing missing was the mayo, but it was just divine with such a mix of fresh and saucy, crisp and juicy with the grilled eel providing a real kick of flavour. The mix of salmon and avocado is traditional enough, but to this was added a prawn tempura (I have no idea where on earth they found these prawns, they were enormous) and a good slice of Unagi, with a dash of kabayaki sauce to hold it together.

Mixed tempura

I love Teriaki sauce, so we settled for a dish of Teriaki Duck with a bowl of rice and a mixed collection of tempura. I bagsied the squid really quickly but there were some more of these enormous prawns and some excellent vegetables. I particularly rated the fan cut aubergine and disc of sweet potato. These were served with a nice light soy vinegar sauce rather than a heavy thai style dipping gloop.

I didn’t think I’d stand a chance of fitting myself around either of the cheesecakes, but we were brought some really nice green tea ice cream with two spoons to finish with. Next time we’re trying the black sesame ice cream, apparently it’s even nicer.

Japanese food of this quality is never cheap, but our bill for two came to £55, which includes four soft drinks. Whilst we did get completely carried away, I thought this offered fantastic value for money and I would definately go again if I’m ever within sniffing distance of the city.

Like I said, this offers a lot for everybody, whether you’re a keen eater of raw fish, prefer your meat grilled or are an avid vegetarian. It’s got a solid wine menu, starting at just £12 a bottle, with cocktails available on request. You could pop by for a £5 light lunch, phone through a take away order, have a sensible quick dinner with a bento box or choose one of their 25 main meal dishes.

There’s something about Japanese cuisine that leaves you feeling refreshed, light and happy. And, apparently, it even cures headaches.

Can you tell I liked it?

I’ve already described my basic fudge receipe, but this was my attempt to take it to the next level. Provided one likes ginger, of course.

I made a single batch of fudge and split it evenly between rum-soaked raisins and a fun mix of ginger.

Fudge Ingredients

I wanted the fresh pungency from ginger root, stem ginger to occasionally come across and bite into and, of course, some of the Rochester Dark Ginger for good measure. The fresh ginger needs to be grated, you can’t just chop it up like you would for a stir fry because you need just the juicy essence, grating it leaves behind all the woody fibres. I used four finely diced lumps of stem ginger, a good inch of root and about 50ml of the wine.

Grating ginger root

The biggest problem was the wine, it was liquid enough that it offset the setting point of the sugar when I stirred it into the mixture. In hindsight, Ishould have added it with the cream at the start and simmered it down, although that’s not much use when it’s split with the rum and raisin.

In the end, the only way I got my fudge loaf to set was to make use of the professional-quality, walk-inblast chiller for a few hours. When I did, it was very smooth and tricky to cut through, but was just chewy enough to be delicious in small pieces. At room temperature, it would have been lovely with three or four layers of chocolate round it. It was still very popular with family and friends though.

Using the walk-in blast chiller

Interestingly, it didn’t stay that way. Normally, my fudge gets eaten long before shelf life becomes an issue, but after two weeks, it had absorbed sufficient moisture from the air to make the sugar crystals swell up and it went from a smooth chew to a coarse crunch. I can start to see why people add emulsifiers to the basic mix.

Cakes of fudge

I also made up some pies, which are always tasty and surprisingly calorific. To satisfy as many as possible, I did a mix of puff and shortcrust pastry, with mincemeat and apple with ginger and cinnamon.

pie way to heaven?

I’ve been surprised by the local supermarkets recently, I finally got around to stepping foot in York’s new Waitrose and thought I’d see what the fuss was about. By and large I wasn’t too impressed, but the shrink wrapped variety of ready to cook meat available was remarkable. A few things stood out in my memory: Veal mince, boned Pheasant leg portions and some misc bits and pieces that I wouldn’t put in my shopping basket let alone my mouth. Sainsburys weren’t being left behind though, with a racks of lamb ribs available for all of £7 and duck legs and properly aged, dry cured gammon joints at half price.

Although Tesco took the medal in the run up to New Year by having a display full of Beef foreribs at about £18! Sadly, such a steak would be wasted on just two of us, it’s far more fun to cook it to medium, let it rest for 5-10 minutes and carve it in the centre of the table straight onto everybody’s plate. Those that prefer their beef brown and crusty can have the outside half and those that prefer it pink and meltingly tender can have the inside half, careful carving puts both into the same slice. Leaving it on the bone adds to the theatre and gives you something to hold it by when carving.

I normally don’t make meat the star of the show in my cooking, but this is how I attempted to do justice to some of these great cuts.

Duck Legs with honey roasted Winter Roots and Vichy style Kale

Ingredients

2 duck legs
2 branches of curly kale, or another sturdy brassica
1 carrot
1 parsnip
1 beetroot
1 red onion
a good chunck of celeriac
butter
mustard seeds

Method

Warm up a roasting pan in a moderate oven, about 180 C.

Score the skin and generously season the duck with a bit of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, get some colour onto the skin in a hot pan and then pop it into the oven. The duck needs about an hour.

Peel and roughly chop the root vegetables

melt some butter and oil into the pan and toss the vegetables so they’re mostly coated and put into the oven.

The vegetables should need no more than 40 minutes before they’re soft in the middle and nicely crunchy on the outside. For a hint of extra sweetness, try adding no more than a teaspoon of honey to the vegetables about 5 minutes before they’re ready. Don’t be tempted by any more or the honey will dominate the proceedings.

Whilst the oven does its thing, take the stalks out of the kale and roughly slice it. Put it all into a large pan on the hob on a low heat, add a tablespoon of mustard seeds, a good knob of butter and a mug of stock or water. Put the lid on it so that it can steam and leave it alone. You might need to occasionally shake it, but try not to take the lid off or you lose the steam.

Pour yourself a glass of a nice rich Red wine and sit around for half an hour whilst everything cooks itself.

Roast duck leg served with kale and winter roots

Herb encrusted rack of lamb

This was both an attack of opportunity and a ‘I’ve seen this on TV, how hard can it be?’ moment. It needs a pan that works on both the hob and in the oven and for me at least, required me to really trust the cooking times.

Ingredients

1 rack of lamb at room temperature
2 or 3 tablespoons of chopped herbs. Rosemary, Thyme, Mint and Sage go well with Lamb.
1 Parsnip
a hunk of celeriac
2 potatoes

Method

Peel and chop the vegetables and cook in the oven as in the previous recipe

If you like, trim down the lamb rack to remove most of the fat so it goes well with fast cooking. Take off the membrane too, whilst I found that made the lamb look very rough, I was aiming for tender more than I was pretty.

Trimmed and herbed lamb

Cooked lamb rack

Using your fingers, rub a little oil over the lamb and liberally coat it in the chopped herbs.

Sear the lamb on both sides on the hob to start it cooking and get some colour into it, a minute or two per side is enough. Then put it into the oven to finish off.

I used Jamie’s cooking times of 25 minutes per pound and made sure I rested it for 5 minutes before carving. It comes out of the oven a little underdone, the resting time is important.

Then you’ve got the fun of carving down the bone into cutlets to serve with the vegetables and a good dollop of mint sauce.

Roasted lamb rack

Eddie’s found us another new venue, this time it was the boardroom in York’s first five star hotel, built in the old GNER headquarters and very grand it was too.

The tickets sold out ahead over time so it was a popular event with a good mix of new and familiar faces. The banter was strong and it ran on a clear hour beyond the usual, with our attention split between some good and puzzling drams and each table trying to outdo the last with comedy smell descriptions.

A friend and I were quite confident that we’d identified the first three drams and fairly confident we’d spotted the last three. Despite plenty of double guessing, Eddie still out foxed us and we scored a grand zero out of six, seriously good fun although I could really do with smelling things for myself. With not too much further ado, to the whiskys!

1) This one had plenty of time spent in bourbon casks and maybe 6-12 months of sherry at the end, its nose had more bite than its taste. It was well rounded and had a fair amount of depth with the slightly sweet notes of christmas spices, muscavado sugar, cinnamon and almonds. It was an elegant spirit and had a lot of offer, we guessed one of Bruichladdich’s myriad bottlings but it was a Bunnahabhain 12

2) A straight bourbon maturation and slightly stronger at somewhere between 50-55%, this was quite a closed spirit and needed a drop of water to bring it to life. I had a big hit of eucalyptus from cough sweets in the middle of the finish. Other suggestions for its nose were “a certain cigar making shop in New Orleans” and “the smell of bbq’s prawns at the seaside, two hours after you try to get it off with a wet wipe”. Yes, it was one of those evenings. We thought it was a Caol Ila but it was a Berry Brothers single cask bottling of Bowmore 21

3) A sharp citrus bite to the nose mixed with “something from Group 7 on the table” preceded a body with some distinctly aniseedy tones, with suggestions of Danish salted liquorice, bazooka joe’s bubblegum, samphire and barley twists. The finish was good and long, but non too memorable. We guessed at a Bowmore with a hint of sherry at the end, like the Mariner I had earlier this year, but it was a new offering from Jura “Prophecy”.

4) Iodiney hints of cream and pear drops were our tables thoughts, along with a deep sweet aftertaste that made this cask strength offering particularly fine. It was a darker spirit but it didn’t have so much as a nod to sherry finishing, we thought perhaps a Bunnahabhain or another Bowmore. It was the very recently released 2nd Batch of Bowmore’s Tempest 10 year old. Very simple, very effective.

5) This was pale and youthful spirit, with a sharp estery nose. I found it pleasingly clean and fresh with quite a lot to offer on the palate of sweet, smokey, peaty, nuts. It stuck to the glass like new spirit, but it was at 46% drinking strength. We had to guess at Kilchoman, although any supplies of that are very hard to come by. It turned out to be the “Big Peat” blend from Douglas Laing, so was in plentiful supply at a half-way reasonable price

6) Finally we had another pale spirit that was met with near uniform approval, which is rare. We described it as tasting of distilled happy and was probably an Ardbeg or Laophroig. It was revealed to be a unique cask sample of Ardbeg, matured for 10 years in first fill Bourbon and wasn’t available at any price. Ah well, it’s always nice to meet some Dragon Water that’s seriously special.

I’ve tried a few over the years and most seem to substitute salt for actual flavour. I’m not going anywhere near the cheaper own-brands, but some of the worst offenders are also the most popular brands, for example, Oxo’s vegetable stock cubes are either 17% or 35% salt, depending upon how you read the ingredients. Agreeing with Delia, I used to be a fan of Marigold’s Swiss vegetable bouillon powder (17% salt), but unless you get the low-salt version (10% salt) it left me wanting a pint of water by the time I was through. Which is a shame because Marigold has a really good flavour and it’s packaged loosely in tubs so you can just add a pinch of it here and there as necessary. But I digress, I think that any stock powder that lists salt as its first ingredient is just not trying hard enough.

Which is why I’m glad that I tripped over Kallo’s Very Low Salt stock cubes with, and I counted it twice, no added salt. Yep, all the taste and none of the heart attacks. Unfortunately it comes at a premium, Ocado list them at £1.25 for six, enough for three litres of stock, whereas the Marigold is £1.40 for twice as much.

I don’t get through that much of it, so I don’t mind paying whatever price Sainsbury are charging at the time, but if you’re thinking ahead then Amazon comes to the rescue.

To start as we didn’t mean to go on, we had a quick tour of the different styles of Joseph Perrier Champagne. The distinctive savouriness of older vintage champagnes is provided by the extra time the yeast spends inside the bottles, as Phil said, it tastes of umami paste. I wonder how long it will be until somebody tries to make a champagne and marmite cocktail. I much preferred the younger cuvees.

Next up was an interesting comparison of Viogner from different regions. A solid 2009 Anakena from the Rapel Valley in Chile was light and fruity and extremely drinkable was put next to a 2008 Langmeil from Australia’s Barossa Valley. The Australian one was recognisably the same grape, but the smell and taste was much more intense. A Riesling from Chile was very subtle and light, nothing like as sturdy as the German versions. One of the stars from this table was a Marsanne, 2008 La Forge Estate from the Languedoc. It wielded a huge hit of strawberry, had some vanilla hints that suggested it had seen some American Oak and had a darker colour from some European Oak. It was good, but £8 is the upper limit for what I’ll spend on a bottle of wine.

Stepping next door was another Chilean Viognier. This one was a 2009 Casa Silva Reserva from Colchagua Valley and was a similar price point to the previous one. However, it must have been grown on a different facing hill because it was hugely stronger than even the Australian one, which just goes to show that you can’t even judge a grape by the country it was grown in. Microclimate > Climate. A 2008 Californian Chardonnay was surprisingly nice, with hints of grapefruit on the nose. Turned out it hadn’t been ages in oak, so no wonder I liked it.

Next up was a sterotypical Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand, a good gooseberry taste but I felt its acidic finish lingered too long. That was in stark contrast to a great Pino Gris from the same vinyard, Gladstone in Wairarapa. This was not at all astringent and had a lovingly smooth, rich finish, that didn’t linger at all. However, it was also £14 a bottle, so I’ll be giving that one a miss. Unlike a 2008 Argentine Torrontes from the Tomero vinyard in Mendoza. This had a strongly floral orange nose and a taste that hurtled straight to my spicy tastebuds. Whereas a Gewurtztraminer is spicy and sweet, this Torrontes is spicy and dry and has qualified itself as my favourite from the show. It was £9 a bottle though.

Back to Europe next for a surprisingly drinkable Rose and a fun chat with this table’s master of ceremonies where we learned, amongst other things, that 2009 was an exceptionally good year for Western European wines. I still wouldn’t choose it, but a Les Cerisiers Rose, 2009 Cotes du Rhone from Boutinot had a surprisingly good body, was light and fruity like they’re supposed to be, but without the sickly aftertaste or tannin finish that seems to go hand in hand with the blends. Turns out that’s because it wasn’t a mix of finished white and red wine. Another new grape for me was a 2009 Clairette from Domaine Des Sources. This grape is mostly used in blends from the Loire to Chateau Neuf de Pape. It was relatively cheap and I found it would have been a good session drink, fruity without being astringent, didn’t seem to hit any of the stereotypes I’ve met. The final wine I tried from here was a winemakers selection blend, marketed under the Novas brand which mixed three chilean wines together, presumably because that’s what they had to hand. Its nose hit a number of tropical fruity notes, from pinapples to peaches and grapes. It was too long in European oak for my taste though, with a strong taste that was quick to fade away.

A latin theme greeted us next with a selection from Italy and the Martinez Lacuesta vinyard in Spain. A white Rioja was unusual but a bit bland, my instincts said it was good but I have no idea why. A red Rioja Crianza was spicy, with hints of sweet vanilla and, apparently, mushrooms.

Next up was a 2008 Riesling from Barossa, Australia. Its nose of red apples was so strong I had to double check that it wasn’t cider, a very good wine that was different again from the other Reislings, very drinkable. Finally, I found a Gewurztraminer. This one was a 2009 from Martinborough, New Zealand and was presented in the usual exaggerated Alsace flute bottles. It’s broadly similar to an Alsace one but had more residual sugar and a shorter finish. I was reminded why it’s my favourite small doses grape, but at £30 a bottle it’s priced itself so far out of my market it’s not even funny.

At this point through the afternoon, my notes have become terse and illegible. Can’t imagine why. I’ve also briefly moved onto the reds that the others have already sampled for me, so I can just dash round and hit the highlights

One of their favourite reds was a 2009 Shiraz from Domaine de Montval, France, helpfully reduced to £6 which is approaching affordability. I found this to be light with just enough tannin to balance the strong blackcurrants. A 2006 Esprit Spinifex from Barossa, Australia was rich but sweet and desirable. A motive that was reflected by the professionals who priced it accordingly.

The last red was a 2009 Shiraz from Domaine les Bruyeres which had many positive critical reviews. We disagreed and thought it tasted of changing rooms with hints of wet socks on the nose.

Compass Box were showing a selection of their whiskys and their wines, but disappointingly didn’t have any of their orange infusion left after last week.

I finished the day with a crafty Mortlach whilst the others had their backs turned.

So, a few Wine Facts for the day:

• We prefered a Syrah from a hot climate rather than a cold climate
• I really liked that 2008 Argentine Torrontes for being spicy and dry
• The French Clairette was a very good vin de pays and I’ll keep an eye out for that when I’m next over there

I started with frozen blackberries because that’s what I happened to have, but they’re also hugely less messy to handle than fresh. Just lay them out on a chopping board and gently apply a rolling pin to break them apart into individual berries. Or put them inside a freezer bag and smack it with the bottom of a frying pan. That works too.

I had a go at topping them with an oaty crumble mix, inspired by something I saw in a magazine, but I didn’t do at all well with making the mix. You need your crumble to be properly crunchy and not at all dry and powdery. You also need quite a bit of it, a good couple of hundred grams I think.

I’m a bit wary of having large pieces of fruit inside a baked cake, they can be hard to balance with cooking the surrounding sponge because there’s a high contrast between the fruit’s thermal mass and water content and the batter, often resulting in them being surrounded by soggy bits.

Ingredients

300g self raising flour
200g sugar
180-200ml milk depending on the size of your egg
1 beaten egg
100g melted butter
zest of 1 unwaxed lemon
200g apples
200g blackberries

Method

Sift the flour and sugar into a large mixing bowl and work in the lemon zest, egg and butter.
If you’d like your muffins to be purple, thoroughly beat in the fragments of blackberries so they disintegrate into the batter.

Peel, core and finely dice the apples.

Gently stir through the apple pieces, adding the blackberries at the end if you prefer them whole.

Spoon the mixture into muffin cases, no more than half full if you haven’t got a full depth muffin tray to support them. If you’re adding crumble, now’s the time to put half a cm on top of each muffin.

Bake in a preheated, moderate (180C if it’s a fan) oven for up to 25 minutes. Check them after 20minutes though in case their edges have started to burn.

Leave them to cool on a rack before trying to take them out of the paper cases.

Apple and Blackberry Muffins

Finished Apple and Blackberry Muffins